Depression in the Workplace the Research Proposal

After more persuasive interviewers were brought in -- over the last two weeks of the recruitment period -- the response rates jumped to 72.5% (Dewa, 745).

Results: Using the World Health Organization's Health and Work Performance Questionnaire the authors showed that those who received treatment for depression "…were significantly more likely to be highly productive" than were workers who had "moderate or [a] severe depressive episodes" but did not receive treatment for depression (Dewa, 743). The negative news associated with this research is that only half of the Canadian workers who indicated some depression on the questionnaire actually agreed to get help.

Discussion: Being an older female greatly increased the odds of being in the highest group in terms of productivity following treatment for depression (Dewa, 747). The authors suggested that females may be more likely to seek help for a depressive disorder than males, which may have skewed the data a bit in the final analysis. Moreover, the authors suggest that it is not clear as to what "high job performance" is compared with "low job performance," and in future studies those terms need to be more fully understood.

Hypothesis III: results show that mental disorders "…are significantly associated with work productivity," and there is a "positive association between treatment and work productivity" (Dewa, 749).

Works Cited

Birnbaum, Howard C., Cremieux, Pierre Y., Greenberg, Paul E., and Kessler, Ronald C. (2000).

Management of Major…